Originally published as an op-ed in Greek newspaper Kathimerini, 30 January 2022.
2022 is packed with critical elections in many places around the globe, including France (to decide whether Emmanuel Macron will continue to be the resident of the Élysée), Brazil (Jair Bolsonaro is almost certain to suffer a rout), the Philippines (featuring the scions of two autocrats—the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the daughter of current president Rodrigo Duterte—as main protagonists), and the United States (where the Democrats are expected to suffer losses in the November midterm elections). None of those contests, however, is as important as Hungary’s national elections in early April. The reason for that is that none of the possible outcomes in that contest can be good for democracy or for Europe.
The Hungarian election will take place in a highly polarised climate where a motley coalition of six opposition parties will try to unseat populist leader Viktor Orbán, the country’s prime minister since 2010. On the same election day, a referendum based on deliberately manipulative questions about the sexual orientation of young people is also to be held. Hungarian voters will be asked whether they support the teaching of sexual orientation courses in public education, the promotion of sex-change treatments for minors, or the unrestricted presentation of sexually explicit media content to the same age group. According to ruling Fidesz party and Orbán himself, the referendum is seen as an act of defiance to Brussels and its demands for making Hungary’s public education more liberal in terms of LGBTQ and human rights. According to the opposition and many NGOs, it is just another stratagem by Orban to maintain the support of conservative voters. They now urge the voters to abstain in order to cancel the referendum for insufficient attendance.
Orbán has a good chance of winning the elections. The most recent polls give him a relatively comfortable lead, the synchronous referendum will add wind to his sails, and, in coming months and weeks, he is certain to open up the state coffers and offer various subsidies and other handouts to Hungarian voters. He has already announced tax cuts for families, an increase in the minimum income for all, and special benefits for pensioners.
If Orbán wins, he will enjoy a fourth consecutive term as prime minister of Hungary, thus consolidating the regime he has established and so proudly calls an “illiberal democracy.” After twelve years of authoritarian and virtually uncontrolled power, he has emaciated the Hungarian judiciary and the state’s other independent institutions (including the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Court of Audit and the Competition Authority); staffed the administration with loyal party officials; handed almost all the country’s universities over to private institutions chaired by government ministers; and taken over most of the private media, with the result that today there is not a single independent radio station outside Budapest. If Orbán and Fidesz stay in power, their country will sink even deeper into the swamp of populism in which it has been mired for twelve years.
But the interesting thing about today’s Hungary is that even the possibility of an opposition victory does not allow for much optimism. The coalition of parties that makes up the anti-Orbán alliance includes socialists, green liberal bourgeois, and former far-right parties, whose only cohesive element is the desire to remove Fidesz from power. The leader of this opportunistic coalition is Péter Márki-Zay, a conservative politician and father of seven children, whose only administrative experience is as mayor of a small Hungarian town.
Because of the current electoral law, as amended by the government in December 2020, even if the opposition wins, it will need almost 5% more votes than Orbán’s party to gain a majority in parliament. But even in such an unlikely eventuality, especially since the elections are not guaranteed to be free and fair, the problems would have just begun for Hungary.
The first crucial question is whether Orbán and his party, whose political existence is inextricably linked to staying in power, would accept defeat or attempt a Hungarian variation of the events that led the loyal mob of another defeated leader to attack the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. A second crucial question is whether Hungary’s opposition parties will be able to maintain their fragile unity and come up with a common realistic program, while convincing the citizens that they are indeed capable of running the country. Finally, and here comes a third difficult question, even if the opposition remains united, how will it be able to carry out deep reforms without the two-thirds supermajority required by the Orbán-inspired constitution? In that scenario, the government is to remain weak and Orbán loyalists will take to the streets at every opportunity accusing it of trying to violate the current constitution. This will open a vicious circle of political polarization and social strife, with pro-government forces also taking to the streets in defense of a democratically elected government that has, nonetheless, lost democratic legitimacy.
It seems, then, that no matter who wins in the forthcoming Hungarian elections, the main victim is going to be democracy itself. What would that mean for the European Union? First and foremost, it will mean that EU will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to further violations of the rule of law and the effective dismantling of democracy in one of its member-states. Until now, the EU’s tactics to curb the illiberal bully of Budapest were based on the one hand on the lure of generous funding (amounting to around 6% of Hungary’s annual GDP) and, on the other hand, on the threat of legal sanctions (which however stumble upon the veto power of other member states keen in also promoting populism rather than liberalism).
The ultimate question is: What would be the reaction of EU if, after the April elections, Hungary ceases to be a formally democratic country, in addition to being an illiberal one? The answer is pressing. For, very simply, gone are the days when this was an unthinkable scenario.
